CAC makes play for city funding

Monday

Jul 21, 2014 at 12:01 AMJul 22, 2014 at 2:16 PM

Time will tell how much Urban Infrastructure Recovery Fund money comes Clintonville's way and what projects it will pay for, but the chairman of the area commission's planning and development committee predicted it will be worth the wait.

KEVIN PARKS, ThisWeek Community News

Time will tell how much Urban Infrastructure Recovery Fund money comes Clintonville's way and what projects it will pay for, but the chairman of the area commission's planning and development committee predicted it will be worth the wait.

"We'll have some good projects for Clintonville," Andrew Overbeck said last week.

A list of recommendations for spending recovery-fund dollars in the neighborhood was approved by the full Clintonville Area Commission at its July 10 meeting.

The amount of money the program will receive and when that decision will be made has not yet been determined, Overbeck said.

The program was established in 1992 by then-City Councilman and current Mayor Michael B. Coleman to address capital-improvement needs in the city's central neighborhoods, primarily those built prior to 1950.

In the last round of funding in spring 2013, Clintonville received $475,000 to pay for six projects, ranging from street trees to a feasibility study of planted medians on sections of North High Street and Indianola Avenue.

This time around, the process for coming up with the proposed recovery-fund projects was handled a little differently.

In addition to area commissions suggesting ideas, city officials took residents' proposals online.

For Clintonville, the members of the CAC's planning and development committee held a meeting in December to hear from residents on infrastructure and mobility issues that might be worthy of attention, Overbeck said.

Eventually, city officials took the online ideas and those forwarded by commission representatives and vetted that list to come up with projects that could qualify for the funding, he added.

"We've had a really good relationship back and forth with them," Overbeck said.

Projects contained in the resolution approved July 10 include:

• Installation of sidewalks on the west side of Indianola Avenue from Beaumont Road to Morse Road, on West Tulane Road, on East Beaumont Road, on a stretch of Northmoor Place to be determined, and on East Dominion Boulevard.

• An open shelter at Sharon Meadows Park.

• Decorative street lighting on North High Street from Morse Road north to the city limits.

• Multiuse paths and other bicycle facilities on north-south alternative bike routes or boulevards that follow Calumet Street to Foster Street and Sharon Avenue; on Indianola Avenue and North Broadway; a Tibet Road bike boulevard; and a paved shoulder on Indianola Avenue from Morse Road to Lincoln Avenue.

• Planted medians at other locations on Indianola Avenue and North High Street.

• Traffic-calming devices in the vicinity of Dominion Middle School.

• Additional street trees.

• Installation of an intersection lane and on-street parking strip on Calumet Street.

This is not a prioritized list, according to the resolution, which also said that curb replacements, sidewalks on East Cooke Road and alley repairs, while necessary and important, would not be the "best and highest use of UIRF funds."

"There are a couple of things that are just maintaining infrastructure we already have, like street trees and sidewalk replacement ... and then I think there are some transformative things there," Overbeck said.